Travel Tramp News Updates

From forgotten Buddhist temples to bullet-marked colonial forts, discover the best things to do in Jaffna, Sri Lanka. For decades, Jaffna was cut off from the outside world. During Sri Lanka’s protracted civil war, the peninsula was considered a no-go zone, its roads guarded by checkpoints, its landmarks overshadowed by… Read more »

From the granite landscapes of Dartmoor National Park to the icy tundra of Iceland, here’s our guide to some of the best wild camping spots that few people have yet to discover! There’s something subtly and quietly exciting about setting up a lonely tent far away from all the noise.… Read more »

From beautiful beaches to sacred Hindu temples perched atop cliffs, discover the best things to do in Trincomalee, Sri Lanka’s up-and-coming port city. Just 20 years ago, Trincomalee was effectively a no-go zone. As the Sri Lankan Civil War raged around this ancient port city on the island’s northeastern shores,… Read more »

Discover the brutal and bloody story of Sigiriya, Sri Lanka’s iconic and top-rated tourist attraction. High above the forests of central Sri Lanka, a great block of volcanic stone rises from the plains, its summit scarred with the remains of ancient walls, gardens, and pools. This is Sigiriya, better known… Read more »

Why is Ceuta Spanish and not Moroccan? Here’s everything you need to know about Spain’s African exclave. “You see the Spanish flag at the top of the citadel?” asked local tour guide Toni, who was born and raised in the Spanish exclave, as we stood outside the gates of Ceuta’s… Read more »

Discover the curious story of Pheasant Island, a 200-metre-long island in the middle of the Bidasoa River between France and Spain, which changes nationalities every six months. On a quiet stretch of the Bidasoa River between the Basque towns of Irun and Hendaye lies one of the most unusual geopolitical… Read more »

I travelled to Tskaltubo, a former Soviet spa town, to hear the stories of Georgia’s Abkhazian refugees, who still reside inside ‘abandoned’ sanatoriums intended as temporary homes. “Hope is the last thing to die,” Lasha told me, standing in the ruins of an abandoned Soviet-era sanatorium in Tskaltubo. It’s a… Read more »

I travelled into the remote deserts of eastern Jordan in search of a vanishing oasis that once teemed with life. And to learn how conservationists are clawing this wetland back from the engulfing sands. Driving east from Amman, the sun beating down on the dark tarmac, it felt as if… Read more »

Discover the unusual story of Jordan’s ‘panhandle’, a cartographical curiosity in the far eastern desert borderlands between Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. The empty highway led northeast from Azraq. Leaving behind the sparse palms and military compounds of this desert outpost, pressing deeper into the basalt-covered plains, it felt as… Read more »

I travelled deep into Jordan’s eastern deserts in search of Winston’s Hiccup, a cartographical anomaly supposedly drawn by drunken statesmen which defined the Middle East’s modern borders. The road was long. The tarmac was scorching hot. And the basalt deserts were eerily quiet. The lingering quiet engulfed me, only to… Read more »